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Tuesday, 9 April 2013

Rice, price, meat and now POLICE!

You've all probably come across the rice protocol (rest-ice-compression-elevation) for the early stages of injury treatment, and you're probably aware of the addition of protect to that protocol too. MEAT stands for Movement-Exercise-Analgesics-Treatments.

Recently I came across POLICE where the OL stands for Optimal Loading. The basic idea is that as tissue repairs it needs to be loaded in order to encourage the formation of scar tissue in a more organised pattern. We've all learnt that scar tissue is laid down in a fairly random pattern and that's what we try to break up with soft tissue work post injury after the tissues have healed appropriately.

Clearly loading the tissue requires skill and knowledge, and should be carefully monitored to prevent further damage to already injured tissue. Loading must take account of the severity of the initial injury and the rate of healing that is taking place.

I don't suppose that there's a lot that is revolutionary and new in such an idea. Appropriate movement at the right stage was presented in the literature that I was reading during my training in 2012. But it might help when you're trying to convince someone that just resting their strained calf muscle is not the best rehabilitation plan!

The original article was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine as: Bleakley C M, Glasgow P, MacAuley D C (2011) ‘PRICE needs updating, should we call the POLICE?’ British Journal of Sports Medicine 46:220-221And I read about it here.

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In2Motion

About Me

I'm a qualified Sports and Remedial Massage Therapist based in South Essex, not far from the Dartford crossing. I've worked at the London Marathon, the London revolution and the London to Brighton Bike Ride.

As a student I ran a weekly clinic at a large media corporation in Victoria.

As well as being a Sports Massage Therapist I am also a qualified Personal Trainer and I have a diploma in Nutrition.